By Adekunle Ade-Adeleye
In a March 26 piece entitled “Binani: The revolution that nearly was”, Barometer rhapsodised the place of women in the politics of old Gongola State, now comprising Adamawa and Taraba States. Senator Binani’s surefooted advances in politics in a ‘man’s world’ served as a peg for the short piece. The column will recall the piece today because of the depressing drama that surrounded the last supplementary governorship poll eventually won by the governor, Ahmadu Fintiri.
Here it is. “Some days ago, when unsubstantiated reports gave the Adamawa State governorship election victory to Senator Aishatu Dahiru Ahmed (also known as Aishatu Binani), the 51 years old Adamawa Central senator was jubilantly believed to have broken the glass ceiling. It was a significant breakthrough for women, exultant analysts suggested. And for that electoral triumph to occur in northern Nigeria was described as revolutionary in scope. Adamawa has produced a slew of women senators: Senator Grace Folashade Bent (Adamawa South, 2007-2011); Senator Binta Massi (Adamawa North, 2015-2019); and now Senator Binani (Adamawa Central, 2019-2023).
“Two things are very significant here. One, all Adamawa’s senatorial districts have produced women senators in a state with majority Muslim population. Something is clearly happening in Adamawa State in terms of its closeness to approximating the civic culture. No other state in Nigeria, not even the so-called cosmopolitan and Christian states of the South, has achieved the Adamawa feat. Two, one of the three women, Sen. Bent, hails from Osun State but is married to an Adamawan, while a second, Sen. Binani, has pitched very strongly and confidently for the governorship. Days ago, she was thought to have won, and had even begun receiving congratulatory messages, before the election was declared inconclusive.
“Before the election stalemated over disputes concerning votes from Fufore local government area, Governor Ahmadu Fintiri had 421,524 votes to Sen. Binani’s 390,275, a difference some analysts believe may be unbridgeable. But whether the supporters of the senator celebrated too early or not, they can take pride in how their amazon has fared in this election season. In nearby Taraba State, another woman, the late Aisha Alhassan was elected senator representing Taraba North senatorial district between 2011 and 2015. After her senatorial tenure, she also contested the 2015 governorship, lost, won back the seat at the election tribunal, but lost it again at both the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court.
“Sen. Alhassan may have lost the Taraba governorship poll, and Sen. Binani may have an uphill task winning the Adamawa governorship election, but given the trajectories of women politicians in the former Gongola State, which now comprises Adamawa and Taraba, something clearly revolutionary and heartwarming is afoot in those hilly and politically advanced and pacesetting regions. The country had better pay attention.”
Mr Fintiri, as this column expected, sustained his lead by winning with 430,861 votes to Sen Binani’s 398,788 votes, a difference of 32,073 votes. Before the supplementary election, the governor had secured what this column described as unbridgeable margin of 31,249 votes, implying that he even added a few more votes to the margin two Saturdays ago. Despite all the drama, the Adamawa rerun was a success, both in terms of freedom of choice and in terms of security. Both candidates behaved responsibly while polling lasted, until collation began and, midway, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) of the state, Hudu Yunusa-Ari, enacted his bombast. After a contrived stalemate during the collation, Mallam Hudu simply got up during a recess and peremptorily announced Sen Binani elected. The agitated APC candidate was to explain later that chicanery was afoot to truncate the collation, thus necessitating Mallam Hudu’s intervention.
If she felt aggrieved, she had the option of litigating the entire election, not just the rerun. By scoring a wholesome 398,788 votes, Sen Binani acquitted herself creditably. She not only demonstrated that her strong showing was durable and remarkable, she also ensured that her image as a statewide politician transcended her senatorial district. She is a politician to watch. But she was misadvised. Her strong showing, despite her defeat, could have been construed in her concession speech as a pedestal for a future governorship contest, had she the noblesse oblige to make one. She didn’t have to win two Saturdays ago. She had not been disgraced, and she was obviously not a pushover. She also had the option of constituting herself, and to some extent her party, into Mr Fintiri’s main opposition.
Instead, by playing along with those who needlessly plotted the stalemate and by seeking inelegantly to profit from Mallam Hudu’s clearly illegal and controversial announcement returning her as elected without any substantiation of vote count, Sen Binani displayed desperation. Apart from being humiliated in the manner the Adamawa rerun was finally resolved, the senator has got herself enmeshed in a controversial N2 billion bribe. The bribe story was likely to be mendacious from the outset, but given the way she was illegally returned as elected, not to say her mistimed and ill-conceived ‘victory speech’, few were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. She ought to have distanced herself from the illegal announcement.
However, she is human. Having been reported on social media and a few online publications as elected, that is before the March 18 stalemate, and having received congratulatory messages as the first woman governor in Nigeria, thus breaking the glass ceiling, it seemed galling to her that the electoral body ordered a supplementary election which she was in danger of losing during the collation last Sunday. To come so close to being a revolutionary first shortly after the March 18 poll, and being in danger of losing that accolade on April 15 in the supplementary poll, were fantasies her mind could simply not process adequately. While the drama lasted, she lost weight, and an otherwise beautiful woman began to look disheveled and gaunt. She put herself through a needless trauma.
Mr Fintiri won the election, and Sen Binani’s time was probably still sometime in the future, perhaps in four years’ time. If she can manage to reframe her loss within the overall ambit of her politics, and canonises her attitude towards that loss in saintly and futuristic terms devoid of the desperation and electoral ugliness that lathered the rerun, she may yet snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. A few reputations have of course been shattered, not least those of Mallam Hudu and the police commissioner on election duty in the state, Mohammed Barde. The courts, to which the senator headed for quick relief, wisely sidestepped the Adamawa election landmines. Even Sen Binani’s party, the APC at the national level, has sought to distance itself from the quagmire. It is time the senator herself did the right thing. She knows what to do, if she can summon the will.
Desperate efforts against inauguration
May 29
It is perhaps time President Muhammadu Buhari saw the continuing efforts to thwart the May 29 inauguration as a challenge to his bona fides, and an unflattering indication that some powerful individuals think if they pushed him enough, he would baulk at handing over the reins of office to his successor. He has said on many occasions that he would hand over; yet, the desperation to undermine the democratic process continues apace. It will continue till May 29. It began with ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo calling for the process to be aborted midstream. Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate Peter Obi and his running mate Datti Baba-Ahmed have taken courage from the ex-president’s sinister ploy and have spoken stridently against the inauguration. So, too, have some faith leaders whose election predictions miscarried. They are also calling for apocalypse. By mid-May, however, the desperation will likely yield to resignation, as the handover ceremony begins to take shape, regardless of the efforts of anti-democratic forces.
But it is curious that Mr Obi and the LP are claiming victory despite coming third. If they win their case, would the courts not face the dilemma of who to give the crown: the second runner-up or the first runner-up. The shiftiness of the whole judicial quest by the LP is that if the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate had won, Mr Obi and his Southeast and religious supporters would not question the victory. How then can they prove that the whole quest is not targeted at the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and to some extent the Southwest?– Chief Obasanjo for entirely private and conspiratorial reasons, and Mr Obi for entirely regional and childish reasons.
Culled from The Nation
